UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Civil rights leader Rev. Jim  Lawson will be speaking on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on Thursday, October 9, 7:00 p.m., Agricultural Sciences and Industries Building.

A supporter of the Gandhian philosophy of nonviolent protest, the Reverend James M. Lawson, Jr. was one of the Civil Rights Movement’s leading theoreticians and tacticians in the African American struggle for freedom and equality in the 1950s and 1960s.

Rev. Lawson helped coordinate the Freedom Rides in 1961 and the Meredith March in 1966, and while working as a pastor at the Centenary Methodist Church in Memphis, played a major role in the sanitation workers strike of 1968. On the eve of his assassination, Martin Luther King called Lawson “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.”

The event, sponsored by the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center,National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) We The People Challenge Grant, Rock Ethics Institute, Africana Research Center, and Penn State University Libraries, is free and open to the public.

If you anticipate needing any type of accommodation or have questions about the physical access provided, please consult with the Richards Center at (814) 863-0151 or RCWEC@psu.edu in advance of your participation or visit.